Mayor concerned about being portrayed as drug abuser who hangs with prostitutes.

Share this story

An Illinois man arrested when his residence was raided for parodying his town's mayor on Twitter is settling a civil rights lawsuit with the city of Peoria for $125,000. The accord spells out that the local authorities are not to prosecute people for parodies or satire.

Further Reading

Plaintiff Jon Daniel, the operator of the @peoriamayor handle, was initially accused last year of impersonating a public official in violation of Illinois law. However, the 30-year-old was never charged. His arrest was kicked off after the local mayor, Jim Ardis, was concerned that the tweets in that account falsely portrayed him as a drug abuser who associates with prostitutes. One tweet Ardis was concerned about said, "Who stole my crackpipe?"

As part of the agreement, (PDF) which includes legal fees, his attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union said Peoria will publish a "directive" to the police department making it clear that Illinois law criminalizing impersonation of a public official does not include parody and satire.

"The directive makes clear that parody should never be the predicate for a criminal investigation and that the action against Mr. Daniel should never be repeated again," Karen Sheley, an ACLU attorney, said in a statement.

In its first response to the lawsuit, the city of Peoria's and Mayor Jim Ardis' attorney told Ars that the mayor and city officials believed Daniel was breaching an Illinois law making it illegal to impersonate a public official. The mayor's attorney said city officials got a judge to issue warrants from Twitter and Comcast to track down Daniel. In short, they were just following the law.

"We took every step in accordance with the law. They appropriately went to the court to obtain warrants. The court reviewed the statute and evidence and made a determination," attorney James Sotos said in a telephone interview. "In the end, that's a judge's determination to issue a warrant or not. It's not unreasonable that a person would look at that statute to see if there was a violation."

Share this story

David Kravets
The senior editor for Ars Technica. Founder of TYDN fake news site. Technologist. Political scientist. Humorist. Dad of two boys. Been doing journalism for so long I remember manual typewriters with real paper. Emaildavid.kravets@arstechnica.com//Twitter@dmkravets

So hopefully we get the follow up where we learn it was taken out of the mayor's salary. Cause you know those Illinois towns are just busting with cash these days. /s

Edit: inserted a plural where it should have been in the first place.

Not many towns in any state that have money to burn like that. It's not just the settlement, it's also any legal fees plus the expenses of using the town's police department as the mayor's personal goon squad.

I think that the Mayor and the city should have to face the fact that they abused their power by having the guy arrested. However, I think that the maintainer of the Twitter account shouldn't get that much money since when you look at the Twitter account it doesn't acknowledge itself to be a parody: the Twitter handler was @peoriamayor, it had an email address for the city's website domain, an URL to the real website, and nothing in the description that would give it away. That guy got lucky. I think that he would have been the one to pay if the Mayor wasn't an idiot and had sued him instead of sending the police, like some kind of personnel cops, after him.

No, 125k is fair given that he now gets to answer "yes" on every job application asking if he's ever been arrested.

I think that the Mayor and the city should have to face the fact that they abused their power by having the guy arrested. However, I think that the maintainer of the Twitter account shouldn't get that much money since when you look at the Twitter account it doesn't acknowledge itself to be a parody: the Twitter handler was @peoriamayor, it had an email address for the city's website domain, an URL to the real website, and nothing in the description that would give it away. That guy got lucky. I think that he would have been the one to pay if the Mayor wasn't an idiot and had sued him instead of sending the police, like some kind of personnel cops, after him.

Lol, yeah nothing gave it away, except perhaps his tweet about losing his crack pipe...

Except, you know, the Constitution which is supposed to be the supreme law of the land... OHHH you forgot about that one did you?

Impersonation of a government official is already a specific carve-out for the 1st Amendment (for very obvious reasons, at that). That said, parody is essentially always protected. That is where they fell afoul. Not on the impersonation claim.

I think the most galling thing about this case, if I remember from the original article, is that it wasn't so much that they were just like "oh, this guy is committing a crime, we better follow the law." It was more along the lines of "this is an outrage, there must be something we can charge him with, figure it out."

It smacked of a personal vendetta rather than honest law enforcement, and because of that, they deserved to lose this case, and lose hard.

I think the most galling thing about this case, if I remember from the original article, is that it wasn't so much that they were just like "oh, this guy is committing a crime, we better follow the law." It was more along the lines of "this is an outrage, there must be something we can charge him with, figure it out."

It smacked of a personal vendetta rather than honest law enforcement, and because of that, they deserved to lose this case, and lose hard.

You're correct. I think Ars reported on it as well but I could not find that article. It is covered in the Vice article linked below. The mayor was definitely using the police force as his own personal whoopin' stick. http://www.vice.com/read/how-a-power-ma ... er-account

Except, you know, the Constitution which is supposed to be the supreme law of the land... OHHH you forgot about that one did you?

Impersonation of a government official is already a specific carve-out for the 1st Amendment (for very obvious reasons, at that). That said, parody is essentially always protected. That is where they fell afoul. Not on the impersonation claim.

You did read the article, right? Cuz, I'm reacting to the quote from the official spokesperson stating they followed "the law" where the police raid is concerned. Or should I have added the [s] [/s] for sarcasm?

Translation: "We tried to sidestep the constitution by passing a law that said we didn't have to recognize part of it."

Again, they literally did not do this. Impersonation is not constitutionally protected. Just like Libel and Slander aren't. They fell afoul of the parody nature of the account, not the impersonation claim.

Except, you know, the Constitution which is supposed to be the supreme law of the land... OHHH you forgot about that one did you?

Impersonation of a government official is already a specific carve-out for the 1st Amendment (for very obvious reasons, at that). That said, parody is essentially always protected. That is where they fell afoul. Not on the impersonation claim.

You did read the article, right? Cuz, I'm reacting to the quote from the official spokesperson stating they followed "the law" where the police raid is concerned. Or should I have added the [s] [/s] for sarcasm?

Yes, I did, and I'm pointing out where things fell apart for the mayor. Nothing I said disputes either this or the previous article.

Glad to see this Mayor didn't get away with his thuggish abuse of the legal system.

I wonder if he ever found his crack pipe?

Erm...how exactly did he not get away with it? What was his consequence? It's the city, and therefore the taxpayers, that end up footing the bill. (Though, they did elect the guy, so they aren't completely blameless.)

Oh crap, I'd forgotten all about this! But when I'd read about this, on Arstechnica, I immediately created a new fake parody twitter account of the mayor. I wasn't the most popular one easily, others had the same idea. But I think I ended up with like 40 followers and a bunch of likes after just a couple hours.

Wish I could find the account. I remember the most popular one just blowing up in like a single day. That was fun. Good to see the guy got at least some form of recompense.